Doves On Distant Oaks

Showing Mercy

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.–Matthew 5:7

This is an odd beatitude, in that the promise that follows is directly related to the preceding action. In other beatitudes, we've been promised to be comforted, satisfied, receive the Kingdom of Heaven, and inherit all the goodness of Heaven. This is the one where if we show mercy, we get mercy. That's pretty straight forward.

But what is mercy? Generally, we tend to think of it as forgive others so we can be forgiven. But it goes well beyond that. Mercy is what you extend to people before they even need forgiveness.

Mercy is best defined as benevolently compassionate in thought and action. Thought is the key word here. We may be benevolently compassionate in action, but how are we in our thinking? Generally, benevolent implies some king of charitable action, a kindness. We need to have kind compassion toward others in thought as well as action.

Do we go out of our way to have kind thought about others, or more often than not, are they cruel thoughts ... selfish thoughts ... or flat out self-righteousness. Do we act like the Pharisees of old, thinking that we're better than some other person.

There are videos going around called "The People of Walmart." You may have seen it on Facebook or on the internet. There are literally hundreds on YouTube. But we don't even need to watch those, we can see people like that right in our own Walmart or other grocery stores. Do we inwardly laughed at times. Just how merciful are we when we snicker at people like that. It's certainly not being very kind in our thoughts.

I can hear all the justifications, because I've made them to myself. What makes her think that she can wear something like that? Doesn't he have any dignity? Have they no shame? Pajamas in public? They need to cover that up. Does their mother know they're wearing that? That's just stupid and deserves to get laughed at ... the list goes on. We whisper to those we're with and say, "Isn't that awful." We come home and the first things we say is, "You would not believe what I saw today." We do that because we're human, but were not being very merciful.

We live in unkind times. Perhaps a little of that unkindness is creeping into our thoughts and opinions. I especially get disconcerted when I see a highly flammable issue presented by someone on Facebook, especially when it's about Christianity. That's not because I'm exasperated by the Christian-bashing that's sure to follow, which most certainly does. It's the bashing back by Christians themselves. There is pure venom in some responses coming from self-proclaimed Christians.

This lack of kindness, lack of mercy, is abominable. You may say this really isn't a Christian individual writing the post and perhaps you're right. But aren't the cruel remarks we think about certain people similar? Rather than being set apart, we seem to be getting dragged further and further into the tactics of the world.

What's worse, we sometimes show the same unkindness to fellow Christians that we show to non-believers. There's an old saying that "The Christian Army is the only army that shoots it's wounded." That bears repeating, because there are instances, not all the time, but instances when they do.

We need to be especially merciful to each other. Satan comes at us in so many ways, they're almost innumerable. He knows our weaknesses. A lot of those times, we keep those weaknesses to ourselves. Maybe that's because we don't want to appear weak, but perhaps it's because the times we tried to express them we got shut down, or got fed some platitudes that didn't really lift us up or encourage us. So we just try to deal with them on our own.

How often have we said we have unspoken prayers? They are unspeakable because we don't really want others to know what they are. Sometimes that's because it's a sensitive issue we have with someone else and its inappropriate to bring it up, but I would suspect it's also because it's some sensitive issue about ourselves. We don't share it because we're afraid of receiving little or no mercy over it. Instead of having everyone fold around us like some protective force field, we just feel open and exposed ... tried, convicted, and hanged.

Perhaps the mark of a fully functioning New Testament Church congregation is how many sensitive subjects are being shared and how much mercy is being shown by everyone else, dealing with each other's most delicate issues in a truly loving manner.